


23. Bleeding Out

by titC



Series: Whumptober 2019 [23]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-11-27 12:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20948096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: The first time Foggy saw the robe, they’d still been in law school.





	23. Bleeding Out

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Whumptober](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/) for organizing it and [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelByPixel) for the beta!  


The first time Foggy saw the robe, they’d still been in law school. One night, when they’d come home a bit buzzed from a few drinks with fellow law students, Matt had sat on his bed and looked up – well, not _looked_ looked, but he’d tilted his face up and said, “Hey, Fogs. Want to see it?”

“See what?”

“My dad’s robe.”

_Huh_. Foggy’s brain had taken a moment to catch up, until he’d remembered people mentioning Battlin’ Jack’s feats earlier in the evening. A couple had mentioned seeing that last fight, and they’d drunk to his memory, and Matt had done his brave, wounded (but still handsome) duck face. They’d moved on to other topics after that but maybe Matt hadn’t, not really. “Sure, yeah.” Foggy had been a bit sloshed, but not enough that he couldn’t realize that moment was important.

A bit unsteady, Matt had stood up again and rummaged in his side of the closet until he’d found a box that he’d gently put down on his bed. He’d opened it and run his hands over fabric inside. “Come on, have a look,” he’d said. “I never have, it was after the accident; but I know it’s bright red and the letters are gold.”

He’d looked so proud then; Foggy hadn’t had the heart to tell him they were yellow more than gold and that the red wasn’t all that bright. Maybe it had faded in ten years. So Foggy had just replied, “Yep, red and gold. Awesome!” and hoped his voice was steady enough so it didn’t betray his thoughts.

“The nuns washed it before they gave his stuff back to me; they said there was sweat and blood on it. But blood doesn’t show on red, you know?”

_Oh, buddy, it does show_. “You’d rather they’d have given it to you covered in blood?”

“Well, maybe not.” But Matt’s face had said, _Yes_.

Later, Foggy thought that maybe it had also been the first time Matt had tried to open up a bit about his truth: of course he’d have wanted his father’s sweat and blood and _smell_ on it, one last trace of him on what little he’d left his son. But he hadn’t said it, and Foggy had just thought, _Huh, that’s a bit disgusting_. He hadn’t known about Matt’s familiarity with blood, then.

The second time he saw it was when he went to Matt’s place to get his suit, so he didn’t run around Manhattan with Cage, Jones, and Rand with no protection at all. He knew where Matt kept it, but he’d never actually opened that closet before. Matt had told him one evening when they’d been eating takeout and drinking cheap beer, back when it was still Nelson & Murdock 1.0 and before the Castle & Elektra debacle. He’d pointed at the closet and said, “I keep it in there, with the first aid stuff,” and Foggy had tried not to be horrified at the implication that Matt expected to need that kit every time he took the suit off, or at least often enough it made sense to store both in the same place.

Foggy hadn't liked it then and he didn’t like it now, looking at the gauze rolls and disinfectant and suture kits and butterfly stitches. But he was here on a mission: to make sure Matt would be as well-protected as possible while he was doing his thing, since he couldn't _not_ do it. So Foggy opened the bag, stuffed in the suit, and tried to put his worry out of his mind.

It didn’t work.

There, under the suit and batons and a thin square of fabric, Jack Murdock's robe was carefully folded, his old boxing gloves on top. The red was even less bright than ten years ago in their little dorm room, the yellow was paler and the thread visibly frayed. Foggy touched it carefully; it was cheap fabric, meant to be worn only once, dazzle the crowd for a few minutes, then be forever discarded. It was almost a mercy Matt was blind; he couldn't see it lose its vibrancy over the years.

Foggy tried not to think of Matt becoming grayer and less animated himself after putting the suit away, after Nelson & Murdock broke up and Elektra died. He had often been bruised and hurt when fighting as Daredevil, but he’d been more lively, too; and Foggy had a hard time coming to terms with that. He understood now why Matt had lied about it, why he’d thought hiding so much of himself was for the best; but Foggy couldn’t… he didn’t want Matt to die too young like his dad had, but a safe life wasn’t a _life_ either, for Matt.

Foggy put back the box with the faded robe, zipped the bag closed, and left for Harlem.

If he’d known then what would happen… he couldn't tell what he’d have done. Save Matt’s life and watch him die inside little by little, or give him the suit so he’d save many lives but not his own? It was easier not to have known, in hindsight.

Matt called him one Saturday afternoon, a few months after they’d put Fisk back in prison a second time. A pipe had burst in his apartment, he said, and he couldn't get the landlord on the phone. He’d tried plumbers, but no one could come quickly when they actually answered, and he was panicking. Punching teeth in, yes; fixing a leak, nope. So Foggy picked up his toolbox and hoofed it to Matt’s, hoping it was just something like a too-old seal that needed changing and not anything worse.

When he got there, Foggy wasn’t surprised to see that the fearsome Niagara Matt had described was more of a steady dripping in his closet, where some water pipes ran along the back. Maybe it sounded really bad for Mr. Bat Ears, but it didn’t look like something that would take too long to fix. He opened his toolbox, took a wrench out, and got down to repairing Matt’s plumbing; it was only when he was done that he remembered that it was _the_ closet.

“Hey, where’s your Devil chest?”

“My what?” They’d been tossing ideas back and forth about a case, Matt taking notes on his computer while Foggy worked on the pipes, and the sudden change of topic visibly surprised Matt. His raised eyebrows, one of them with a week-old cut through it, followed the rim of his glasses. It wasn’t funny at all, of course.

“You know, that box with your Daredevil gear?” And with his dad’s stuff.

“Oh.” The eyebrows went down, and then even further down. “The water got into it.”

Uh oh. “Anything damaged?”

“I’m not sure. It didn’t smell great, so I put what I could in the washing machine and I, uh.”

“What?” That was when Foggy spotted the old boxing gloves drying on a towel under a window. “Oh, your dad’s robe?”

“Yeah. I’m, I didn’t want to put it in the machine, but I thought… there’s a little label in it; maybe you can read it?”

“Washing instructions? Sure.” Foggy stashed his tools back in the box, wrapped some paper towels around where he’d worked to check if the leak was truly gone, and went to wash his hands. The robe was there in the bathroom, and the label only said what the fabric was made out of: cheap stuff mostly, as he’d thought.

Matt leaned against the door jamb; he’d taken off his glasses. “So?”

“Nothing about how to wash it, but maybe just soak it with a bit of soap in cold water?”

“Okay.” Matt produced a bucket and some soap, and soon enough the robe was floating in the water.

Foggy wondered if Matt could somehow sense it, sense how what was left of the original color was bleeding out of the robe, staining the water and the soap bubbles red and making it hard to distinguish the folds of fabric in the bucket. Maybe the dye had a particular smell even now, twenty years later.

“You know,” Matt said. “I wish I could have seen it.” Foggy made a tell-me-more noise. “The fight, my dad wearing the robe. His win. I wish I could have seen how red it was back then, when he was wearing it. He was so proud of it.”

_And you of him_, Foggy thought. “It’s still red,” he said out loud.

“Well, I wouldn't know.” Matt smiled; he looked wistful. “It’s been so many years. I used to – back then, when he told me to feel it, touch it, I thought it had to be very expensive. It was his big fight, you know? Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s big one.” He stuck his hand in the water, twirled it a bit in all the red. “I know better, now. I’ve learned the difference between polyester and silk. But I just… I still like to pretend.”

Foggy’s throat was tight; he didn’t know what to say.

“I promise you, I won’t do what he did. I won’t _choose_ death over life, I swear. My dad, he knew it was coming. Some things he said… he knew it. He thought I’d remember he won, that I’d remember he hadn’t been a sellout in the end. He thought he’d leave me that, and some money, and that it would be enough. That it would be better.” Matt’s voice broke, and he stopped talking.

“He was misguided, but he did it out of love.” Well, that’s what Foggy hoped, at any rate.

Matt laughed, a bit wetly. “Yeah. And pride. He was a Murdock, after all. We’ve got our pride.”

Self-awareness? Matt wasn’t blind to his faults, but he kept them for the confessional more than his friends. “As long as you remember you don’t have to go it alone, buddy.”

“Yeah. I think that’s it: he didn’t talk to anyone, so no one stopped him. He didn’t have anyone but me; he didn’t have _you_.”

Foggy didn’t say anything about the tears in Matt’s voice, but he drew him into a hug and held on tight. “You’ve got me, Matt. Even when you’re an idiot, you’ve got me.”

The red robe was even less red when they took it out of the bucket. Most of the color had bled out by now, but it didn’t matter. Matt wouldn’t choose death like his father had; he wouldn't have all the red leak out of him along with his life. _He_ had people in his life who’d make sure there was always another choice, always.


End file.
